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OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com
This release is for the Dreamcast, PSP, Wii Wiz, GP2x and Dingoo:
Heres whats new;

As quite a few of you asked about upgrading their preorder to get the unit a bit faster, I've finished the submission form to apply for that.

This is only applicable if you ordered the Pandora before October 2011.

The money made from these upgrades will be used to fund more pre-October 2011-Preorder-Units, so this will help everyone still waiting patiently for his / her Pandora to get it a bit faster
It will also help us to cover a bit of the loss that the old PCB production company caused us.

It's up to you to decide how much you want to pay for that. The mininum is 85 EUR (or 101,15 EUR incl. 19% VAT)., though you can also pay more if you want.
The Payment doesn't have to be done before your unit is ready to be dispatched - so there's no risk.

Tools to enable developers to create new games and import existing titles to deviceThe software development kit for upcoming handheld console GameGadget will be released on Friday, the company has revealed.Developers will be able to create games and import existing titles for the open source device, although the console won’t be released till March 30th.Titles will appear on the GameGadget marketplace for download, and its creators say devs will be able to set their own pricing.The new handheld will include minimal specs, featuring 65mb of internal ram, a 433mhz dual core CPU and a 3.5” LDC screen, whilst its interface includes four action buttons, a D-pad and two shoulder buttons.“After two years in development we are very excited to see new content and licensed games being developed for GameGadget,” said the handheld's creator Jason Cooper

Not much has changed, just a bugfix here and there, like some graphic problems in Italian Job and Castlevania. In case you missed r13, it was similar release with some regression fixes, so nothing too exciting overall.

OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com
This release is for the Dreamcast, PSP, Wii Wiz, GP2x and Dingoo:
Heres whats new;

Sorry for the late newspost - I was totally worn out after the production start on Thursday and Friday so I really needed a weekend to relax.
Had to catch up some sleep as well.

Well, yes, as you've seen in Link's video: It has finally happened. The mass production run has started

Is everything going fast and smooth?
Well, not yet. But that would've been unusual (not only for the Pandora, but also for other devices )

With the first units built, you always go a bit slower as you need to test everything and see if you get any issues on the PCBs that would require the machine to be tweaked.
While assembling the first 40 units, we were also trying to optimize the position of the L and R buttons, so that we don't need to scratch or pad the plastic each time.
This took a while, but with the 30 units Link built today, only one R-Button needed a bit of optimizing, however, most of the L-Buttons were still sitting a bit too high so needed a little cut with the blade.
We'll change this in the machine program, so in the end they'll work as good as the R-Buttons

So far, 180 PCBs have been produced, 80 have been assembled, fully tested and are ready to ship. While this sounds like a lot, the theoretical output of the machine is 250 per day (8 hour shift), but mass productions should start at a slower pace to be sure evrrything works.
Only 3 of those refused to bootup at all, while about 8 have a non-working left nub, so it seems there's some part that needs an optimized placement in the machine program as well.

Everything else was working fine on these PCBs, and the other ones can be fixed.

So with 3 non-booting ones, we are currently at a failure rate of 4%, which is pretty nice for the beginning of a mass production (failure rate goes down the more units you produce).
It should be noted that those 3 were all among the first 15 produced

The new stickers for the battery compartment should arrive tomorrow, all the AC Adaptors should also arrive within this week (scheduled to be in Germany tomorrow), so I'm currently preparing the invoices and eMails for the preorderers.
There's another surprise for you which I'm waiting for... hopefully, it'll be at my place within the next days as well, otherwise, I'll start shipping out Pandoras anyways (it's not mandatory).

Regarding mass production, there is one thing left to be solved:
The OMAP is a real beast to populate. With a pitch of 0,4mm and different tolerances regarding PCB production standards (in this case, the solder mask as well as the metal stencil layer), it takes a bit of work to get everything go smoothly.

Currently, quite a few of the bare PCBs couldn't be used, as some pads didn't have solder paste on after going through the machine.
Instead of just ignoring that issue and populating the PCBs anyways (we've had something like that with a different company already...), GC decided to find a proper solution and are now heavily working on this.
10 panels with bare PCBs have gotten their solder mask tolerances measured, so that a new metal stencil layer can be produced based on these values (to find the absolute middle).
If we're lucky, then this will work out and all PCBs can be populated without any risk. We'll get that stencil layer on Wednesday.
GC also has other solutions ready in case the offsets of the solder mask are too high.
While they won't be running at full speed (so... slower than 250 a day ), they will probably be faster than I can ship them out at the beginning, as I've got so much work to catch up with!

It really kicks ass how helpful GC is and how they successfully try to prevent producing non-working boards and finding solutions fast and quick.
They're totally dedicated to what they're doing, and that's awesome. We're totally on the right way

I'll try to find the time to setup the upgrade-info-page tomorrow and let you know how grab your Pandora a bit faster (only classic preorderers )

ZX81 one of the biggest coders to enter the homebrew scene of the last few years released all his emulators, homebrew games and homebrew applications here at DCEmu, today ive updated the site and now you no longer have to leave his site to see every single release he has made for the PSP, GP2x, Wiz, Caanoo and Dingoo.

Another of DCEmus sites, Pandora Homebrew News has today been smartened up and revamped. Whats new on this and our other sites that have been revamped lately is that when you click on a news story you stay on the site instead of going to the forums.

The PCBs have all safely arrived in Oberhaching at Global Components, who are now currently preparing the metal stencil for the production run, which takes a few days.
The machine will be loaded on Wednesday, production itself will start on Friday.

Link and I will both bear witness to the birth... and will start to assemble the units right away in Oberhaching.

So far, Linux-SWAT, Link and me (mostly Link and Linux-SWAT though) have been working on preassembling the cases.
We'll continue to do that on Monday, so hopefully, when production starts, we'll have at least 300 - 400 of them completely ready to just put in the PCB, test and flash.

It's a freaking amount of work, but we'll do our best

The next 5000 cases have been ordered, more LCDs and all AC Adaptors have been checked and shipped to Germany.
A sample of the new LCD Cables has also been shipped to me so I can review it next week and hopefully place the order shortly after that.
This is pretty narrow, we might have a one or two week pause after the first 1000 units before we can produce the next 1000, but then again, let's see if I can manage the constant high shipping rate anyways... I might even need that week to catch on!

I've not yet found the time to create an updated instructions manual, so the first units will probably ship without one, though I finally found the time to contact some German companies for TV Out Cable production, so I hope to give you some good news soon.

notaz has also worked hard on Kernel 3.2 and we'll have some nice new OS testing image for you up soon... while it's just a beta-test and preview of an upcoming 3.2 kernel (with some known bugs still left), you'll probably like what you'll get... well, let's not spoil the fun of surprise here.

So, basically, the only delay in shipping will probably be the amount of work to do from ourselves, but with Link and my parents helping out, we should get there

As you probably seen on this thread, both Link and Linux-SWAT are currently in Ingolstadt, helping out with the Pandora assembly.

They already prepared over 300 keymats with DPads and put over 500 LCDs into the lids.
Next up will be soldering speakers to LCD Cables, putting these together with the WiFi antennas into the upper lid and finishing that one.

So things are progressing nicely here.
I need some more DPads but luckily Craig has additional ones left I can grab from him.

The bare PCBs are now finished and will be shipped to Germany today.
So early next week, everything should be ready for the mass production.

Link, Linux-SWAT and me will drive to Global Components and build as well as test as many units as possible.
Please give us some time here. I'm planning to start shipping the units out around February 22nd.

I hope I can keep up with building units once these two are gone again (Feb 21st), but in worst case, I can hire some staff to help out.
This will only be an issue with the first 1000. After that, GC will assemble the units, so all I need to do is ship them (which will still be a massive amount of work).

All the parts for the next 1000 units have also already been ordered, so once we start, there shouldn't be a stop.
I'm a bit nervous though about the next cases and LCD Cables. They have been ordered a while ago, but they are coming from China.
We won't run out of cases and cables before the first 1300 units are shipped, but that means that we need them here in 6 weeks.
I'll keep you informed.

I will also keep you informed about the TV Out Cables. I've now asked some German companies for quotations - so hopefully, we should have this last issue settled as well.

Link will also ship the Pandoras to US customers. This will save some shipping costs.
Thanks for his and Linux-SWATs help

It's been a while since the last newspost, so I guess it's time to give you some updates about what's happened

1. Cases, LCDs, Batteries

The parts from Craig have all safely arrived. Enough cases for 1300 Pandoras and enough batteries for 3500
Only about 500 LCDs were left, but Fatih already got 600 new ones for me, so we're safe with these as well.
Craig forgot to include the small parts (buttons, DPads, Light pipes, etc.) and sent them to me last Wednesday, so these should arrive here as werll soon.
Fatih also organized 1100 more AC Adaptors for me.
We hope the next 4000 cases will be finished mid March (just in time for the next 1000 Pandoras). We made some tweaks to prevent the most common cracks, and I should get a sample within the next week. Once I can confirm these changes (nothing major), production will start immediately.

2. Parts for the Pandora PCBs

We've got all the parts for the first 1000 PCBs and I already placed the order for the parts for the next 1000 (since there's a leadtime of 4 - 6 weeks for some parts).
So we're safe here as well.
We already got enough of other parts like WiFi antennas, volume wheels, EXT connectors, etc. for the next 4000 or more units.

3. Pandora production

As soon as I get the remaining small parts from Craig, we're starting to pre-assemble as many cases as possible, so we only need to put in the PCB.
The bare PCBs are expected to be finished about February 10th and production will happen shortly after.
So, yes, it's about 2-3 months weeks before the production starts!
Please don't expect that we'll ship units right away - while I'm getting some help here, these still need to be tested, assembled, etc.
I think we should see the units shipping from around February 22nd on.

I hope we can keep up with the production - GC should be able to produce 250 units per week, and as we're building these units ourselves at home (AND shipping them!) at the beginning, we might be flooded with work.
So don't be too angry if we're a bit slow at the beginning - in worst case I'll hire more people to help and after the first 1000 units have been finished, full assembly will also take place at GC.

4. Information for all new preorders

As production is nearing, I'll send out eMails to everyone who preordered a Pandora since September 2011. These eMails will include a confirmation for the payment as well as the adress and you will still have the chance to add any items you want from my shop (Retrodes, Everdrives, SD Cards, etc.)
Of course I'll also let you what payment remains.

5. Information for all old preorders

I'd really love to send out all the remaining preorders out first - but unfortunately, this is not possible.
The reason is simple: I need about 250,000 EUR to produce 1000 Pandoras and that money needs to come from somewhere.
So I need to sell new units first (the new preorders) to get enough money to have the next 1000 units safe and then the remaining ones will all go out to the classic preorders.
I'm aware that that's pretty annoying for all of you who have been waiting so long - but I can't do much about it (unless someone donates me about 300,000 EUR )
However, I know some of you would like to pay more money to get the unit earlier (basically the same as the Premium unit).
So I'd like to offer such possibility as well. As every upgrade gives the project some more money, I can actually deliver MORE units per batch to old customers as well, so it's a win-win situation.

I also know though that there are users in the community who safed their money for months to afford the preorder, while there are some who've got enough money to easily pay for the upgrade.

So my idea is this:
Anyone CAN upgrade to move up the queue, but I want to let the user decide how much this is worth for him.
I need to set a minimum amount (maybe 75 - 100 EUR?), but if someone really wants to support what we're doing and likes the Pandora, he can pay more and therefore help deliver the units faster to old preorders as well.

I don't want to make this decision right away, I always want to get your opinions first, so please let me know what you think about it and if you have any improvement ideas, let me know as well.

6. Upgrade your Pandora to the new PCB

As mentioned before, I want to offer the possibility for any owner of a classic Pandora to upgrade to the current PCB, which offers 512MB RAM.
For 150 EUR you can send in your Pandora and get the PCB replaced replaced with a new one.
The old PCBs will be fully tested, put into new cases and sold as refurbished versions for a lower price to new customers.
Therefore, if there's anyone who really needs more RAM (mostly for desktop usage) has the chance to upgrade it and any new users who want to get it mainly for gaming can get these units for a lower price.
The money made from these upgrades will also be used to ship out more of the old preorders.

I'll setup a website for that upgrade when the production has started and will let you know.

7. The kernel and the OS

Both notaz and DJWillis as well as more devs from the community are working on getting a new OS as well as kernel to work.
ArchLinux for the Pandora already uses the current version of the new kernel (3.2) where notaz fixed a lot of issues already, but there are still some issues left. For example, Bluetooth is not working yet, audio is causing issues and the NAND access is a lot slower. Stuff like SGX, WiFi, keyboard, both SD Card Slots, etc. are already working fine.
The new kernel will be mandatory for the new units - as the old one can't access to more than 256MB RAM
So when you get the new Pandora, the system will report 256MB RAM until the new kernel is ready.

DJWillis is still working on moving to the current openembedded version. There are some bootable images, so we're getting there, but there's still a huge amount of work left to do.
Anyone who would like to help out can contact DJWillis on #openpandora (FreeNode).

8. TV Out Cables

It's weird how something simple like cables with a few connectors can cause more issues to be produced than everything else.
Well, you might remember that the old company didn't want to do them anymore.
Then Fatih tried to find some more companies - but they all wanted a minimum order of at least 10,000 cables.
Then suddenly (just before CNY), the old company contacted us and told us they want to produce them again...
We haven't heard anything since then from them, so we're not sure what the actual status is.

Working with Chinese companies can be totally weird sometimes...
Anyways, I'll also ask some German companies now, they might be a lot faster and more reliable... and they will do lower quantities as well.

That's everything for now - quite a huge status update post. In case you have any further questions, let me know.
I'm open and will answer all questions faithfully (if I know the answers )

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